Ansel Adams home for sale

BrianShaw · Sep 24, 2023

I wonder how much his name adds to the asking price. Can’t wait to see the final selling price.

AnselMortensen · Sep 24, 2023

Well...
Looking at Photrio member Barlow's FS listing of AA letters...AA's mail & delivery address was 131 24th St.
The house for sale is 129 24th St.
Maybe the darkroom was in the basement of the house that went down the sinkhole.....

ic-racer · Sep 24, 2023

His more well-known home in Carmel, with the basement darkroom, is seen here:

DREW WILEY · Sep 24, 2023

His name will add zero to the asking price. Nothing of historic interest remains, and it's already way overpriced, especially given its adjacency to a former sinkhole. Sometimes someone will pay that kind of price due to the location alone, and then outright level the entire lot and start over. Another five million is pocket change to a billionaire.

Basements don't work along the CA coast either because the rock is such darn hard basalt that it doesn't make sense, or the rock is just so damn weak like in this case. And they didn't use hydraulic cement at that time to seal off things below grade. But the little darkroom most people have seen pictures of was in Carmel afterwards.

VinceInMT · Sep 24, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
…and it's already way overpriced,,,

Some might suggest that much in the Bay Area is overpriced. Someone I know just bought a 1,600 SF rancher in Mountainview for over $2 million.

logan2z · Sep 24, 2023

VinceInMT said:
It depends on what part of the city or what part of the Bay Area. One of my kids lives in MountainView and that’s pretty nice.

Mountain View is 40 minutes south of San Francisco. Different worlds.

VinceInMT · Sep 24, 2023

logan2z said:
Mountain View is 40 minutes south of San Francisco. Different worlds.

I understand that 40 miles there can be a big difference. Still $2.2 million for 1,600 SF seems expensive but I know it’s all relative. 140 miles west of where I am is Bozeman, MT and the average price of a home there hit $700K. Average income is $67K.

Vaughn · Sep 25, 2023

Bought the worse house (almost) in one of the best towns in CA (obviously biased). About 0.08 of an acre (35'x100' lot), but my property tax is low and if needed, I can crawl home from the bar nextdoor. A couple nights ago I wandered over there and listened to some friends (The Lost Dogs) do an acoustical set and had a pint. A lady friend was a guest singer and I met her new beau, so it goes, nice guy. I then went home and listened to the band's electric set while coating platinum/palladium on paper in my bathroom. Who needs a sound system...but Karaoke nites can be a little rough.
My UV exposure lights are in the garage and I process on a Costco table in the kitchen. Not quite as nice as AA's set-up in Carmel which I have seen a couple times (but never in action), but my place was under $160,000 when I bought ten years ago. I got spoiled being in charge of the university darkroom and having that huge facility to my self for a few decades (working around those pesky students).

Time to head back into the bathroom and coat some more paper -- quiet over at the bar this Sunday night, might have get a CD turning. We are due for a rainy day tomorrow (1.75"), good day to print!

CMoore · Sep 25, 2023

Vaughn said:
I then went home and listened to the band's electric set while coating platinum/palladium on paper in my bathroom. Who needs a sound system...but Karaoke nites can be a little rough.

logan2z · Sep 25, 2023

VinceInMT said:
I understand that 40 miles there can be a big difference. Still $2.2 million for 1,600 SF seems expensive but I know it’s all relative.

Agreed, it's crazy expensive. I wasn't commenting on the cost of housing in the Bay Area, I was just saying that the problems currently being experienced by San Francisco aren't shared by other parts of the Bay Area, like Mountain View and other South Bay cities.

Richard Man · Sep 25, 2023

I was just at the Legion of Honor (for the Tudors exhibit) which is right by the area (I mean within half a mile or whatever, Lands End, Presido, etc.) This is the kind of views you get around there:

Alan Edward Klein · Sep 25, 2023

VinceInMT said:
I understand that 40 miles there can be a big difference. Still $2.2 million for 1,600 SF seems expensive but I know it’s all relative. 140 miles west of where I am is Bozeman, MT and the average price of a home there hit $700K. Average income is $67K.

Mountainview is part of Silicon Valley so it's become very expensive.

VinceInMT · Sep 25, 2023

logan2z said:
Agreed, it's crazy expensive. I wasn't commenting on the cost of housing in the Bay Area, I was just saying that the problems currently being experienced by San Francisco aren't shared by other parts of the Bay Area, like Mountain View and other South Bay cities.

Yes, I get that. It’s my son who lives in MV and he said that The City has gotten worse since he lived in The Mission about 10 years ago. However, he said he just helped his sister-in-law move to Noe Valley and that’s quite nice even though it’s in central San Francisco. Castro, Mission, Market, etc. can be sketchy.

VinceInMT · Sep 25, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
Mountainview is part of Silicon Valley so it's become very expensive.

It’s also interesting that the “natives” hate that term when describing Santa Clara Valley.

Vaughn · Sep 25, 2023

I remember visiting an Aunt and Uncle in Millbrea back in the mid-60s. They lived in a fairly new house up a canyon, with the San Francisco International Airport visible way way down by the Bay. Just up the block were new homes being built (and eventually Hwy 280). The spread had already begun...
My parents bought their first house about 1950...new homes built on an old golf course and polo grounds just outside Los Angeles...inexpensive 3-br homes for the GIs and their families to come. The bare hills between us and the big city soon were soon covered with houses (with real estate listed in the Hong Kong newspapers at the time.)
The Redwood Curtain is being affected by climate change -- it is not keeping out the Californians from the southern part of the state (Santa Rosa and south) like it use to. It worked good when I moved here in 1972, but stay away now...

It was interesting and fun walking through small Scottish towns and seeing plaques on doorways celebrating that a poet or other artist had once lived there. Interpretive signs often included the thoughts/poem of a Scottish poet who may have once passed that way a century or two ago. I am not 100% as I have never been there, but there is a family rumour that the house my grandfather built in Bakersfield was a plaque of a historic nature in front of it...I know of no reason why.

Richard Man · Sep 25, 2023

VinceInMT said:
It’s also interesting that the “natives” hate that term when describing Santa Clara Valley.

I have been here for just under 30 years now, and I haven't heard anyone complaining about here being called the Silicon Valley, including friends who were born here

DREW WILEY · Sep 25, 2023

The Bay area has multiple large cities, and many interconnected smaller ones, plus satellite burbs. Nearly all of our big cities have some very rough neighborhoods as well as upscale safe neighborhoods. That includes what is nominally classified as Silicon Valley. Some neighborhoods have gotten way better, and some have gotten worse. Same goes for the burbs. Upscale Palo Alto had its dangerous sister city, East Palo Alto; and SF had its dreaded Hunter's Point neighborhood all along.

Of course, I'd prefer the Santa Clara Valley to be like it once was, filled with orchards. Taking away the northern half of some of the most valuable and productive farm soil on earth and paving over every inch of it, just because that is where a lot of computer innovation began, didn't make a lot of sense.

CMoore · Sep 25, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
Of course, I'd prefer the Santa Clara Valley to be like it once was, filled with orchards. Taking away the northern half of some of the most valuable and productive farm soil on earth and paving over every inch of it, just because that is where a lot of computer innovation began, didn't make a lot of sense.

I was born in San Jose. 1960
There was a street called Blossom Hill Road that started where i lived and terminated at the extreme of South San Jose. Part of the road traverses the side of a hill and gives a view of Santa Clara Valley.
Circa 1965..... I can remember asking my Mom why the road had that name.
She told me that (just 10 years prior) there were lots of orchards out in the valley, and in Spring Time it was a beautiful sight from.......... 'Blossom Hill Road.
As a young kid it was hard to imagine. All i ever saw were buildings

BrianShaw · Sep 25, 2023

Apparently nobody here is really a big enough Ansel Adams fanboy!

GregY · Sep 25, 2023

BrianShaw said:
Apparently nobody here is really a big enough Ansel Adams fanboy!

With the current price of Kodak films and enlarging paper, the purchase of Ansel Adams house has reluctantly been postponed....

DREW WILEY · Sep 25, 2023

He has not only a mountain named for him, but an entire exceptional Wilderness Area of the Sierra Nevada (formerly Minarets Wilderness - my old front yard view). Has a gallery dedicated to him actually inside a Natl Park - what more do you want? It's not like he lived in anything architecturally significant in SF itself, or that still holds any real reminders of him. I can detect enough details in the linked pictures to affirm that the remodel used high quality doors and windows, but totally out of character with the vintage of the house. A competent but disappointing "fix it up for sale".

Just one more parcel of overpriced real estate. I'm stating that through the eyes of someone with a fair amount of geological training, not just in relation to high Bay Area prices in general. Couple weeks ago ran into a buddy of mine now also retired. For decades he was one of the best foundation and seismic retrofit contractors around here. But his side line was writing and illustrating local history books, especially with reference to our great earthquakes. Now he does that full time, along with lectures. Or one can look at USGS maps and see just how much property is built basically upon seismic Jello. Realtors certainly aren't going to show you any such map; but they're readily available. But unpredictable urban sinkholes and long forgotten drainage tunnels add a whole other layer of risk to the question.

In my case, I opted for a lot with no view, but a tongue of actual solid granite beneath the neighborhood. That's quite uncommon in the Bay area. Still had my mountain place with tremendous views for a long time; but had to let go of that once the seasonal workload became unrealistic facing my 70's, especially in terms of keeping wildfire risk abeyant. But good Bay views are just a short walk away, atop the same knolls the coyotes howl at night.

BrianShaw · Sep 25, 2023

Well IDK, Drew, his name association surely seems to be paramount in the marketing…

faberryman · Sep 25, 2023

BrianShaw said:
Well IDK, Drew, his name association surely seems to be paramount in the marketing…

I don't know the comps in the neighborhood, but surely you need something to justify $1,430/sq.ft., particularly with all the adjacent homes squashed together.

Vaughn · Sep 25, 2023

CMoore said:
...
She told me that (just 10 years prior) there were lots of orchards out in the valley, and in Spring Time it was a beautiful sight from.......... 'Blossom Hill Road.
As a young kid it was hard to imagine. All i ever saw were buildings

I remember miles of orange groves when my family would pack up the station wagon for a day at the beach (San Clemente or Laguna)...and my brother and I would try to be the first to see the Matterhorn towering in the smog all by itself, just off the Santa Ana Freeway.

BrianShaw · Sep 25, 2023

faberryman said:
I don't know the comps in the neighborhood, but surely you need something to justify $1,430/sq.ft., particularly with all the adjacent homes squashed together.

When there is something additional like “historical value”, comps aren’t very meaningful. Whether it’s deserved or not, it’s being marketed as such. I wonder about the comps too!

Big prices for modest abodes is increasingly common here in LA, also. It’s almost absurd.

Ansel Adams home for sale

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